Readers don’t go online to read Rosenthal and Heyman for the latest in-depth, investigative feature about their particular teams. But for breaking stuff around the game of baseball, those guys are really good at it. And they’ve both done the newspaper thing — beat writing, column writing — extremely well in the past. This is just a different gig for them. And one their websites care dearly about.

Newspapers? Sure, they love to be first. But these days, more and more emphasis is being placed on getting it right.

There’s a lot more to that, including a fun anecdote which explains why I didn’t see Baker with all of us degenerates at the hotel bar during the Winter Meetings for the past couple of years.

If you’re at all interested in what people in baseball media think about baseball media, by all means, check Geoff’s take out. And yes, I promise: no more meta-content about blogging and baseball writing and stuff today. I know it gets old for some of you.

Tangotiger had this to say about the scoop graphic on his Inside the Book blog:

“However, plenty of people like to say ‘I told you it would happen’ when something happened. But, they never say ‘Oh, that thing I said would happen? Never happened’. Counting hits, without counting the outs is not something that we should be doing. If Rosenthal and Heyman are in the business of predicting 100 stories, and only 15 or 20 of them turn out to be true, well, are we better off than replacement-level reporters?”

Tom Tango is a smart guy who can provide amazing analytical data on baseball but the whole purpose of “hot stove” baseball is the “what if” game and discussion. While my grandfather had to sit around the old tavern with his buddies near the “hot stove” to talk about how the Sawx could get better or how the Yanks might be hurting for pitching, we get actually speculation! While they are not citing “done deals” they are providing discussion that all of us are intrigued with. Quite honestly, Tango’s stuff gets too complicated to truly digest while mostly revealing him to be an intellectual snob. I enjoy the Rosenthal, Heyman and Olney rumors as they are at least founded in either teams, agents or players leaking of information. Keep it coming so I can ignore the 42 inches of snow we already have gotten and can dream of spring!

That’s been Gammons’ MO for years. He throws every wild rumor at the wall, so he can take credit for the small handful that actually bear out. And with Heyman you’re often hearing whatever misinformation Boras wants put out there to help his client’s cause.